•Corrections

Yesssss, it seems I have some corrections and additions to make.

First, in the my original armour combos post (and on the Armor page), the fifth item in the male w/o meditation combo reads "studded gorget". It SHOULD read "studded gloves". My mistake. [10:50PM - And Redrum just caught it, too... never mind...]

Second, it seems that tinker traps are not quite as useless as I thought they were. To properly set one up for use, lock the chest using a bare key then put the key on a key ring. You should get a "this trap is armed" message. Next, use the key ring to unlock the chest. Notice you don't get a "trap is disarmed" message. Now, they don't work quite the way they used to. Pre-patch, once you had the trap in this state, ANY attempt to open the box would set off the trap (kaboom-or-hisss, deathcry). Under the new system, when it is in this state the person who locked/unlocked the box can get into it, but no one else can. If a thief is snooping through your backpack, he/she can click once on the chest to get the # of items/weight message, but they cannot double click and open the box. The same goes for a PK who kills you and loots the chest. They can't get into the trap chest unless they 1)use the Detect Hidden skill to expose the trap, then 2)use Remove Trap to get rid of the trap, then 3)use Lockpicking to open the box. If the trap is not removed, the moment they try to use Lockpicking on the chest the trap will go off, and will keep going off indefinitely.

While I preferred it when the trap went off the moment you tried to open the chest, you can't have everything. Basically, it means that anything you keep in a trap box is available for you to use and unstealable. Just lock/unlock the box and leave the key in your bank box. While testing this, I had a couple of thieves try to random steal - instant guard wack. A PK may loot your box, but he isn't getting inside it (know many people with GM Remove Trap? I sure as hell don't). Thanks to shanty for originally pointing this out to me, and to the hordes of Moonglow bank thieves on Baja (who helped me and didn't even know it).

•Minor change.

The armor section was changed just a tad. For the male character without meditation, it was stated that you should wear a plate gorget and a studded gorget. The studded gorget was changed to studded gloves. Sorry for the confusion.

• UO blues

Well in case you missed my post in the forum the imbocile who bid on my account didn't respond to my email. He wanted greatness, he just couldn't afford it. Or he decided to take the 45 minutes it now takes you to create a 7x Dex unstoppable badass macer. Anyway, I took the opportunity to switch my mains weapon of choice from swords to archery. As I've been doing this it's impossible not to notice how much this game has changed. I have stated in the past that I have been for most of the changes made. I've wavered on that a little and let me tell you why.

Ok supposedly the UO:R was put in to keep new players from quitting because they couldn't handle dying to a rat or pk their first day. It was also put in to keep people from looting your kills, flagging and recalling, etc... Let me tell you a story of Ian's first day in UO. (No I'm not putting this in the fucking story section)

I log on to a shard I forget which. Right away I'm hit with the ability to custom my character. Cool! I made a char similar to my real life likeness but because they didn't have supermodel chiseled looking stud of a character I wasn't able to come all that close. Anyway, I log into the world of "Sosaria" more specifically Brit. I could not believe what I was seeing. Mass people everywhere, real life people playing a character that they could apparently do anything with. I was amazed. I had been playing an online game called magestorm for quite some time and I didn't think anything could beat it. I seemed to know right away that I was playing something much much different that the run of the mill doom style games.

Basically I wandered around figuring things out. I hooked up with some guy who was also a newbie. We proceeded to walk the countryside and loot anything we saw. I remember someone saying "hey those guys are grey" as we walked by. I had no idea what being grey meant. Well I soon found out. I was so pissed, I had in my mind just been pk'd. DAMMIT!!! Death to all pk's. I made a character and called him Furious, because that's what I was after dying like that. I made it known that when I got tougher, I would kill all the big bad evil pk's of the world. One thing I never did was ask someone for help. I did not walk around Brit telling people I was a newbie and asking for gold, or items, or the dreaded, "anything you could spare." The most I ever asked of someone was an answer to a question. Someone was nice enough to show me how fight a dummy and raise my swordsmanship. I had trained for 2 hours getting my swords up to a sterling 25 and my tactics not far behind. I was now ready to do some serious damage and defend myself against these so called "pks". I travel out to the countryside away from the protection of the guards. Hey I had 25 skill points in swords.. who needs guards? So after leaving town I see a great hart. I thought well why not,lets give my new found skill a try on this helpless deer. So I attack this deer with the magic sword I found at the bank. (at the time I could not believe some dumb fool had dropped a "magic" sword.) Haha his loss was my gain. So I attack this deer, and basically it proceeded to absolutely destroy me. It was then that I realized I was going to have to do some serious work to build this character. So did I quit? Did I whine and say that the game was just to hard? Hell no. I went about playing this game for 5-6 hours a day in between my college classes. Shrugging off my girl, my friends, homework..well I shrugged that off anyway. But the point is I took it upon myself to get better. The only reason I stayed in the game was that it presented a challenge. Not only in building a character but I was obviously going to have to outsmart the people that were playing opposite me from their own computers. You see, the entire reason this game fascinated me so much was that anything was possible. Someone could kill me. Someone could loot me. Someone could be a total ass and get away with it. It was up to me not to put myself in these situations or to handle myself accordingly if I I found myself in that sort of predicament. My experience from my first few days gave me the drive to be what I turned into, which was a recognizable force on my shard. Without getting noto'd my first day or without dying to a deer, I would not have had the desire to become good and stick it out until I was able to play and be a badass in my own right. From what I see that is gone. Newbies are in candyland from day one. They go out without any fear of someone killing them or looting them. The most they have to fear is dying to some monster, but no to worry, dying is of no consequence because you can get your stuff back because no one can loot your corpse. Where is the motivation going to come from to get better? Ok maybe eventually they can kill a lich instead of a rat but after that? This game was good because of the atmosphere of the unexpected. Now you can expect the same thing day in and day out. There is no danger. No fear of the unexpected and from my experience, that forboding anticipatory feeling is what made this game great and kept me playing. This negativity may all just stem from the fact that my Stars got their asses handed to them in the worst way last night. Anyway agree with or tell me how bad I suck here.

•THOR'S TOOTHPICK!

Something I got from UO stratics Speils Board....

This just in....this post was made by Cal on the Dev board at 10:30 this morning:
"We've seen many reports that warhammers are doing 70+ points of damage at times. That is simply too high. It's something we are investigating and have disucssed a few solutions already. Nothing is definite yet so I can't say when anything will change.

-Calandryll
Well, there goes my macer. I hope the damage is equal to the Lumberjacker. Then you have a choice what you want to play and it boils down to tactics (and LUCK!) when PvPing fighters.

Who says I can't post information?

Hasta.

UPDATE! As some people have noted in this Forum and the Speils and Rants forum on Stratics, there is a new update in testing:
The following items are currently in testing. Some of these fixes will be in the next update. As these move closer to being updated to the game, they will be moved to the Testing for the Next Update section of the site.
The special attacks for two-handed mace weapons will be reduced to 50% rather than 100% extra. A crushing blow will still be quite effective however. For example, the warhammer will still be capable of doing significant amounts of damage when a crushing blow is achieved (the max will be approximately 60 points, rather than the reported 70 to 80 points).
Falling through floors in the new house designs will be addressed.
Slow moving NPCs and monsters will be addressed.
The ‘rares’ in town chests that were ‘stealable’ before the UO:R publish cannot currently be stolen. This will be fixed so that the items can be stolen.
Trapped chests will no longer give murder counts to the tinker who created the chest.
Issues with thieves not turning ‘gray’ in town will be resolved.
‘Criminally flagged’ characters will no longer be able to go through a moonstone gate.
Improper/Proper house flagging code is being investigated to ensure that the houses are reporting properly.
Client crashes involving the party system, certain regions, and trade windows.

I think this is good. I hope all the weapons are this way as it will REALLY balance the game out alot. Macers are still going to be usable and lumberjackers will be right with them. Additionally, it will give other classes a chance. Those of you with Parry will be able to survive a bit better versus Thor and Hercules. Also, Fencers will be right up there in PvP with their paralyzing attack. I actually believe Fencers will become a bit more popular (again) since they have that attack and, if they are a med warrior, can paralyze you, drop a mage combo on your head, or any variant thereof.

Oh, and for those of you that are thinking about bitching because it's going to be (it sounds like it anyway) an even keel and more balanced with respect to these weapons, just keep it closed and go with it. Alot of you have been whining about it and now it's being "fixed". This makes for variety. And variety is always a good thing.

Thank goodness rares will be available again. Now I don't have to pay exhorbant prices to decorate my home (or rather, my future home; BRING BACK HOUSING BIYOTCH!).

No more bug stealing for you! Nah nah nah nah boo boo! No more outrunning guards! Nah nah nah nah boo boo!

Damn, no more trapped chest murder counts. I see a new (or is it old?) noto-pker coming out. :/ Watch out for those chests you find lieing around everywhere. Also, watch out for chests in dungeons. Use Telekinesis to open it before picking it up. That always helps. If it's locked, move on. If you are a lockpicker, unlock then use Telekinesis. But you guys knew this already right? On the plus side, this will help those guys that carry locked chests on their persons versus thieves. If I remember correctly though, I thought trapped chests didn't give counts and haven't for a while? Someone email me and let me know.

Awesome, houses will be fixed in regards to improper/proper flagging. My friend sold a house a few months ago. A couple of days after the sale, it said "improper". Being the good salewoman she was, she offered to buy it back from the guy so he wouldn't lose it. She was pissed.

Anyway, this all goes to the idealistic opinion that these fixes actually FIXES the bugs and problems we have with UO:R. Go on Test Center. Check it out...and then tell us about it.

Hasta

•All of the Diablo II posts are gone; we have been hacked.

Heh. Just kidding. Anyway, it was kind of hypocritical on my end to tell the updaters to move their off-topic posts to the stories section when I was the one being more off-topic than anyone (luckily, nobody can kick me out of my own site), thus I've decided to make a Diablo II section. If you're interested in knowing about Diablo II beta findings/thoughts/other stuff that nobody cares about, you can find the section here. You may be saying, "why not just make a Diablo 2 site?". The reason is because it's too early to make a Diablo II site at the moment. If I'm going to make a site, it's going to be informative. Fuck news. Fuck news. And fuck news some more. (I hate news - incase you can't tell.) Sure, I could put information about the beta, but the beta is about 1/100th of the whole game and you only get to play the Barbarian with level 1 skills. Plus, some stuff may and usually does change from beta to the final version. Once Diablo II comes out, and I find out what's what, I'll make the site.

Angry will also keep his updates about Diablo II there as well. If not, I will send my bodyguards after him.

•Yes, I'm really this whipped.

Mrs. Angry Bob wanted me to clarify that I wasn't smoking "real" weed. I don't smoke weed at all. Really. I meant it in the metaphorical sense. Kind of like "I don't have the actual numbers handy, so I'll make some up and blame it on being wasted". Being an educator AND a librarian, my wife informed me that I was being a dumb-ass and should stop setting a bad example. I tried to tell her that kids today are having orgies out of boredom before they hit puberty, but she didn't want to hear it. Anyway, welcome to that little slice of having a wife who reads the same sites you write for. Help me. Please.

•Mo' Money, Mo' Money, Mo' Money.

I was smoking weed the other night when I said that potions sold for 40gp and swords sold for under 20gp in the Diablo II stress test. I went back and looked at the actual numbers and found that most of the crap weapons you pick up sell for 1 or 2 gold, while the potions you get with the Find Potion Skill sell for 18gp. not quite as much as I originally said, but 54 gold from three potion in the same amount of inventory space that a 2gp sword takes is still a way better deal.

For those of you wanting loads of cash in UO, use enticement to lure nobles out of town and kill them. They have around 700gp worth of stuff on them and they're easy to kill. Using enticement means you don't have to wait the 15 minutes that actually escorting them imposes on you. You'll also lose a ton of Karma so everyone will think you're a thief and run the hell away from you. Nothing makes people scatter than someone named "The Despicable XXXXXXX" snooping them at a bank.

•Friends.

Friends are what truely make this game great. UO would be nothing if you didn't have friends to join in on your adventures. No matter what you do, people make it better. If you want to go kill people..kill people with your friends..they will watch your back and then someone can verify your story when you say you killed 10 people at once. If you want to sit in a tavern all day..friends make the time fly. Sharing stories of the past. Saying this Id like to wish my very best friend thats ever graced UO, Lexor of Cirrus of Drachenfels, a very happy birthday. Lex and I started out as enemies on a message board, but we grew very close, and its friends like that, that truely make this game worthwhile.

So if I could..id just like to say hi to some of my close friends, past and present, Lex, Lord Hellspawn, Sherd, Dakan, Thanos, Julieanne, Scotti Gael, Madman, Homer, and a slew of others..thanks for being there..thanks for adding to the UO Universe.

•Im back

Well..after a much needed break from UO and the Computer, Im back in the midst of things. Summer is going great, my realationship with my significant other gets better daily, the sun is out, and still no school for months yet. All in all things are going good. Except for Uo. Hokuto has to be the lamest shard ever made. I swear, AOL Legends probably has better PvP action on it right now. What can you say about a server that the top war guild is about 14 wars. Half of those alliances? Bah whatever..ive been spending my days on Drachenfels..getting a guild together. Having fun. I know..fun and UO don't go in the same sentence like it use to. Oh well..we still pay our 9.95 a month don't we?

My interest in PvP is going down rapidly..so im going to try making more posts like Nieves, more of a wide spectrum of topics. Ill still log in *The Murderer Vegeta* but Hokuto's lag is just piss poor right now. Send me some email and tell me what you want me to research..can't leave it all on Paladin's and Nieves feet can we? Im looking to do something new so don't be shy.

•Jorl Treehugger, Day One.

For those of you not following the forum, I said there that I'd be giving daily updates on the progress of my newly minted axe-warrior, Jorl Treecrusher, in his quest for GM lumberjacking.

Today I collected equipment and worked on Jorl's stats ending with 100/27/86 after an hour and a half of snooping and arms loreing back and forth. For those who care, I started him with 44/11/10. He has only the skills I have bought for him to get him to the skill cap. Tomorrow, bone knights and the first skills updates.

•The Freds.

Got this link from the leader of the "Freds". I decided to compare the Bobs and Freds and I noticed that the Freds suck. They wear yellow, cross-dress, have beards that look like shit (really), they're honorable, their site isn't as cool and my link isn't on every page (we can't have that). Bleh. Join the Bobs and kill them. Or don't and kill them anyway.

•E-mail

Now I know how to get E-mail from you people. Jump all over your favorite skill. Ok, let's try this one. Camping sucks, begging sucks, hiding sucks. What's that? Hiding sucks? Yes, unless you are a thief, hiding sucks. If you are a 'PK' and you need to hide, you suck. If you pick a fight, be man, or woman, enough to stand there and take your ass kicking if you can't hang. If you're red and complaining about people attacking you, maybe you should have thought of that before you started offing people?

•Mace Weapons and Parry

Ok, all together now, "One handed mace weapons suck." They suck hard. They are bad. Don't use them. If you have a macer, use the 2 handed weapons and don't use parry. Take archery. Extreme ranged damage added to extreme melee damage makes for a very formidable adversary.

And one other thing. Every character in UO should have GM magery. 50 point heals and guaranteed recalls are always a good thing. You can guarantee recall at something like 82 magery, but you still should have it for the 50 point heals and all around better effects from your spells at GM. I'll make one exception. If your character never leaves the house, it probably doesn't need magery, but then, why do you have a character that never leaves the house?

•Just a quick note.

The page was taking quite a long while to load after the last updates, so I shortened the archived time. It's now set at 3 days. If you miss something, look at the archives. Unlike this page, the monthly archives don't use tables, so the load time is instant.

•New layout and site updates.

Well, I decided it was time for a change. It's been 6 months since I last changed the site and I was getting sick of the gray and yellow colors. I wasn't too fond of the frames, either. It isn't a drastic change, but just to give it some flavor. I hope you guys like it (at least better than the old one), because I'm not planning on editing 152 (I counted, believe it or not) pages for another good 6 months. If the main site takes a bit long to load, let me know and I'll shorten the days to archive (the tables make it so the page loads all at the same time. The more news, the longer it takes to load). I have a 56k, and it only takes a few seconds. We don't have a logo as of yet, but that's ok. I'll work on one. I just wanted to get the site up.

Site updates:

Since stats are so easy to raise now, everything dealing with stats has been moved here. The character creation section has just been changed to what to do and when (IE: raise strength and int; raise healing; etc), instead of work on parrying and maces at the same time, etc. Also dealing with the character creation section - for the warriors, choose what you want for melee. Also, there are no stats on the stats and skills section. Everything is focused on the stat bug. Once the stat bug gets fixed (IE: never), I have a back-up of all of the pages, so no worries about the page being out-dated.

Maces page has been changed. I didn't realize that war hammers had both bonuses (armor/stamina and double damage). That's just stupid.

What KH said about the armor has been added to the armor page.

For the skills main, I stated that you have to mark your primary skill as up in order to passively gain skills (IE: in order to gain lumberjacking from using an axe in combat, swords must be marked as up). Thanks to Jasbrit for the heads up.

On the taming page, a taming tip has been added. That is, if you're trying to tame a high-level monster (dragon, etc), you should fight it until it has 1/10th life, then attempt to tame it. Thanks Violet.

As always, if something doesn't work or isn't right, let me know. I backed up everything just incase. I hope you like the new site.

Thanks to Exwhyze for heavily critizing everything that I tried to do in the creation of the new layout (he made me say that).

•Armour Combos

Unfortunately, the information on the Armour Combo page isn't quite accurate. I tried them out myself with freshly made pieces last night and I got the following optimal combos.

Male Characters w/o Meditation

- Plate Helm
- Plate Gorget
- Plate Chest
- Studded Arms
- Studded Gloves
- Studded Legs

Results - 36AR, -10Dex. It is possible to get 37AR, -10Dex by substituting a pair of bone gloves for the studded gloves, but with bone's shitty durability that AR won't last long.

Female Characters w/o Meditation

- Plate Helmet
- Plate Gorget
- Female Plate
- Plate Gloves
- Studded Sleeves
- Studded Legs

Results - 36AR, -9Dex.

Studded Armour 0 Dex Loss

- Close Helm or Nose (Norse) Helm
- Studded Gorget
- Studded Tunic
- Studded Arms
- Studded Gloves
- Studded Legs

Results - 23AR, no Dex loss. Same bit with the bone gloves works here.

There's no change with the leather armour.

There are a whole range of combos available, depending on how much dex you're willing to lose, but these are the best AR-for-Dex value. Plate and studded are also best to use because of the high HP (durability) of the pieces. Why should this matter to you? Say you've got 2 characters at 36AR. One is wearing an old-style heavy archer, one is wearing the new combo (no shield and forget about dex loss difference for a sec). Each takes a blow from someone using a war hammer. Chances are the hit lands on the chest piece. Of course, the blow damages the armour as well as the player, and since in comparison to plate, chain has much fewer HP, your overall AR is going to fall much faster with the chainmail tunic (especially after the macer bashes it into oblivion).

•::puts on his flannel suit::

I took my Lumberjacker to the Wall last night. At first it was a free for all, but I talked the folks into getting together and making the Wall work. Some folks didn't realize where you had to stand to get parrying gains. Go here if you don't know where. It was pretty decent. Everyone was able to get gains and it was a genuine cooperative effort. Key thing, horses need to stay on the left side. You can't see shit if you bring a horse there. And if you are going, stable your horse. I realized that it's easier if you leave your horse behind. I lost one a few weeks ago with my Macer after I told it to stay (on that night, horses weren't allowed at the wall; I complied with the group's wishes). A bone magi spawned in and ate it while I was busy :/ Bastard. That one was white too :(.

I got him up over 60 healing (FINALLY) and got my lumberjacking close to 70. What sucked is that I was only gaining on average .1 from each Knight I fought. Must've been something I was doing wrong or it was glitched last night. I used a hatchet and put on a wooden shield and a throw away katana when a Knight was on me (so I could gain parrying). Worked fairly well. Over 90 Parrying and Anatomy now, too. I think it's great that you can take a melee character and have him ready to go in a week but it feels so cheap now. Loren will ALWAYS be my favorite character because I WORKED to get her to 3XGM (almost 5). Not saying you guys after UO:R didn't earn it. It was different back then. No power hours for us. Oh, and I didn't macro to get her where she is now.

I took Loren up to Terathans to try and get some fame and karma. Well, it turned out to be a VERY profitable evening. Not because of fame and karma (FAK). That still sucks. I would gain FAK or nothing. That is just stupid. I consistantly gain FAK off liches (even if just a little) at Illustrious, but nothing sometimes from Terathan Avengers? WTF?? It wasn't even profitable because of gold or magic items (loot EVERYTHING you find, people were leaving gold on corpses). I made about 3-4k while there (couldn't carry much more cause I carry alot of shit), and didn't find a single magic item. No, what I found was a REAL trap spot. Now, I am going to show it to you here (this is on GL Trammel). Since I am bringing it to you, I ask that you get out of the way when Loren of da wood shows up and give her top pecking order in looting rights and kills (yeah right!). Just remember to teleport up (where Loren is standing) and down. Cool macro, huh? There is a tree on the south side of the area and bushes/shrubs on the north side the Terathans (or anything for that matter) can't get through (the 2 red [X]'s show you where the vegetation is at). Also, you can get really close to the Terathan Warriors you lure and gain mad Parrying while backing off to heal (the North side). I have always believed TWarriors were better for Parry than knights because they are faster than Knights. But Terathans don't spawn in a little room you can trap them in. If you hunt up there, my suggestion is to have one guy do the running and luring and your party waits for you on top (leaving the teleport spot open of course). Then shoot, melee, magery, and loot in peace. Enjoy :).

I do have a story that was submitted to me. Please go read it. It's hilarious.

I did get on with Clyde to mess around with his lockpicking again. Here is one of the chest spots I told you about west of Yew on Trammel side. I gained more off the 10 chests he has in his pack than the chests there. I got .6 last night. Getting closer. It seems I only gain in the first 20 minutes. I can confirm that most of your lockpicking comes in the first little bit you log on. Anyone else see that?

This shot is of a guy getting "owned" by a Bone Magi. I saw it chasing him near the City of the Dead. He got lit up by a single Flamestrike and just fell down dead. I was laughing my ass off. Sorry guy, it was just hilarious. I wanted to say I killed him myself, but I thought it would be funnier if I just told you the truth. ::grins::

This is a shot of the star room you access using the Brazier in the lower levels of the Terathan Fort. Head west down into the swamp area there when you get down into the main floor of the Fort. Just double click on the brazier over and over, and you are teleported there. Was neat. My friends teleported into the star field and was having a great time. Would be great if some Super Terathan God/dess spawned there and you had to fight it. :)Well, it's Memorial Weekend. I plan on having some fun other than playing UO. Enjoy it everyone. Please don't drink and drive and don't let a friend drive drunk. And just say NO to drugs :) Your mom will thank you for it.

Hasta!

•A couple of corrections...

Well, apparently I was wrong about some stuff on the Diablo II update, so here's an updated update (thought that up myself).

The special arrows (fire, ice, etc) don't exist - it's the bows that get the special abilities. Eh... I like it this way better. There's too many arrows that you can pick up along the way.

Apparently, you can't cast "good" spells on others, because there is no heal other spell that we know of (open beta players only got to play up to level 12 and act 1). Hrmmmm... That would be pretty lame if it doesn't exist at all. But I guess the NPC helpers have to die sometime. In addition to NPC's, you can also hire them to help you. Bleh. I liked it better when it was given out of quest rewards.

What I was right about is that the better belt you have, the more small inventory (potions, etc) space you have. That's cool. Also, when you drink a potion, the potions go down the list. So, say you have a potion in the first slot. If you hit 1 (the hotkey to use whatever is in the first slot), the next potion goes in the first slot. That's cool. I usually died because of this not happening in Diablo I.

I got my e-mail from Blizzard saying that I got in. Heh. Funny. Maybe I'll let Exwhyze (note: we are not gay lovers, as some would say. We are losers that are on 24/7, thus we have a lot in common, thus we hang out a lot, thus...) have it so I can hear him complain about how much it sucks when it really owns. He's a critic. Mainly about stuff that he can't do, which is everything. Hence why he's a critic - jealousy.

•Is the PK Dead?

Sorry I've been gone for so long. Vacation is just that and I needed a good vacation from UO to respark my interest and it certainly has.

I have come to point in UO that I didn't think would happen to me. Before I went on vacation the game had began to get repetitive. I mean I would PvP with my red mage and with Galahad and my tamer would kill everything in sight with his dragons. Day in and day out that is what I would do. I would win a lot of fights, lose a few, and make buttloads of money with my tamer. To me that was getting boring.

So now I have come to a decision that many will flame me for. I am gonna make my mage who is close to being a 7 times tank mage into a mage with the 5 standard mage skills (Magery, EI, Med, Wrestling, Resist) and GM hiding and stealth. For all those who have played for a long time when there was no stat loss or even those who play on Siege now know that the PK was the evil in Sosaria. Most of the old time Pks left a long time ago but those who were there know that those were the days. It is a rush to have a red come on your screen and attack you. I am turning myself into that red.

So for you on Atlantic....evil will soon return to Sosaria. Be ready.

•Eh, he's jesus...plenty to go around.

I got to play for a few hours this morning after work. Here's what I discovered:

Here's the easiest way to get money.
1. Spend a skill point on Find Health Potion.
2. Spend another skill point on it.
3. Use the skill every time you kill something.
4. Pickup all the potions you get from the corpses.
5. Leave the crap swords and other stuff on the ground. Swords take up 3 spots in your inventory and sell for under 20 gold. Potions take 1 spot and sell for 40. You do the math.
6. Make sure you still check out everthing you find though. It'd be a shame to leave a magic or socketed item laying on the ground.

Socketed items are cool. They're sort of like the items in FF7 that you put materia in. I found a socketed spiked club and put a chipped topaz in it. now it does an additional 1-6 points of lightning damage. You can mix and max the gems you want to add to get whatever sorts of effects you want.

Get Mace mastery. Blunt weapons get a 50% damage bonus against undead. Since just about everything in the game is undead, it adds up quick.I like spiked clubs alot. They have a damage range of 5-6 points of damage. That way I know I'm always doing at least 5 points of damage. most other weapons have a range of 1-whatever. I just like the consistency.

Bash uses to much mana to be useful in most fights. Save the skill points for Find Health Potion. It's the best skill in so far. The potions you get using it are better than the ones you can buy, they sell for a ton of loot, and it's really nice to have a never-ending supply of potions.

I did have a good bit of lag though. It didn't look like there was because Everything was still moving, but it was just client side. When stuff got all adjusted, half the monters on the screen would fall over dead or be in different places than they were. I don't think it was Fallen teleporting, I think it was lag spikes. I also got dumped from the server twice.

I also can't find anyplace to change my resolution.

•Wrong, Bob. Jesus loves me.

Well, a visitor (I was asked not to say the name) played Diablo II open beta and decided to give me his stress beta cd key. Woohoo! You own, man. Thank god I decided to download it when I went to sleep last night; just incase I got in. Anyway, onto Redrum's Excellent Review That You All Love™...

Lag
Battle.Net's servers are as stable as you can get. I did not lag once. I did not get a connection loss once. I did not freeze up once. Everything was as smooth as you can get. This was during semi-peak hours. I usually lag after noon anyway. Not with this game.

How it runs
I have a 366 mhz, 128 RAM, voodoo 1 card and a 56k connection. As said with the connection, I did not lag once. But how smooth it runs makes it even better. Nothing was slow, ever. There was no lag, bugs, glitches, slowdowns, etc. In Diablo I (and every other game), running through portals and going through zones takes forever to load. Not in Diablo II. It's instant. If it wasn't for the level highlight (shows level when you enter a zone), you wouldn't even notice that you're on a different level - in terms of switching zones.

Battle.Net
What's different about Battle.Net is that the names are on the bottom. Here's a screenshot of how it looks. Personally, I liked it when it would show the names, levels, difficulties, etc on a list on the right side. Oh well. I'll live. What's cool is that your Battle.Net username is not your characters' name. Thus, I can be named "Redrum" and not "Redrum........."(I own it).

Gameplay
There's just one thing that I can say about this game: addictive. I did not want to stop playing. In fact, I was pissed when it ended. I was getting really into it and wanted to play it all day long. Regardless of the fact that you only get to play the Barbarian with level 1 skills and a few quests, it's still fun and long. It took me two hours to finish it, and that's just a little piece of the game.

The game is so easy to get used to. If you recall how easy Diablo was to get the hang of - Diablo II is literally the same. There is nothing that will take you forever to find out. I was up and rolling the second that I started playing. I did not need to look at the help or say to myself "what the fuck am I supposed to do?".

Characters
The characters are perfectly balanced - as far as I can tell. True, I only played the Barbarian, but you can just tell it's balanced. The Barbarian, obviously, is used for melee only. I could not use a bow even if I had enough stats to use it. It simply would not let me. That's cool. Some characters can do certain things and the others can't. What can the Barbarian do? Wield two weapons at the same time. Woo! Here's a screenshot of me with a sword and an axe equipped at the same time and a portal. The Barbarian seems just right. He kicks some serious ass with melee, but he can't use distance attacks (archery, magery, etc). He gets his ass handed him when spells are casted on him also.

NPC's
What I particularly liked is how the NPC's would show up on the map. If there's an NPC nearby, their name and a symbol will show up, so you know there's one out n' about. What's different about Diablo II is that NPC's don't just stay in town. The NPC's are scattered all over the place. You meet a lot of them that will help/caution you on your travels. What's also cool is that the NPC's aren't there for your needs all of the time. In Diablo I, all of the NPC's were in town and would identify, create, etc stuff for you whenever you wanted. In this game, that doesn't happen. I don't want to give anything away, so let's just say that you have to free some of them in order to get their services. NPC's that you meet along the way also sell different stuff to you. They also do quests...

Quests
Like I said on the review of the recently released Diablo II movie, the quests are easy. When someone is going to give you a quest, there's an explanation mark above their name on the map. The quest location that they give is usually really nearby, so you shouldn't have any problems finding where you need to go.

Let's say that there's a quest given to you by an NPC. What you need to do is go to a location. Once you get to that location, the quest window pops up and says something like, "kill all of the monsters". If you seem to be having trouble finding them for a period of time, it says how many monsters are left. Anyway, after you kill all of the monsters it will say something like, "kill such-and-such". Once you kill such-and-such, the quest window pops up yet again and says "go to NPC-that-gave-you-the-quest for a reward". What's cool about this is that there's sub-quests. It's not just find place, kill monster, get item - like in Diablo I.

What's also cool is the reward. Sure, you get your special item when killing a boss, but you also get a reward from the NPC that gave you the quest. The rewards are sweet. The first time, I got a free skill advance. The second time, I got an NPC to help me when I'm fighting. Speaking of that, if I wasn't the Barbarian, you can also cast "good" spells (heal, cure, blah blah blah) on them if they need it.

Monsters
What's cool is how many different special abilities monsters have. In Diablo I, it was just usually melee, archers and spell-casters (fire, inferno, lightning - that's about it). In this game, it's a whole new ballpark. In the beginning, there's a group of small monsters and a leader. The leader can bring his bitchlings back to life, and he won't stop until you kill him. There's also monsters that can cast cool stuff on you. Instead of your basic fireball, they can literally do everything you can do - if not more. Here's a screenshot of a monster casting a spell that slowed me and my NPC-helper down. There was some monsters that would cast fire arrows, teleport, etc, etc, etc. I didn't feel the need to take screenshots of them all though. What's also interesting is that some monsters run fast and cast/shoot spells/arrows at will. Once you go up to them, they usually teleport or run like crazy. The NPC archer I had was kicking some ass with them types though. That's cool. I dislike when one character can do everything.

Loot
Money is very hard to come by. In Diablo I, you would get like 50 gold per skeleton. In this game, you get about 2 gold per skeleton. The majority of them don't even give you anything. On the stress test, there's about 5 levels and some woods (I think). The total amount of gold that I got was about 300 gold. The only way to make a half-assed profit is to pick up everything and sell it. You also get a bank in town to stash some stuff incase you don't want to take it with you.

Items
Like I said in the review for the movie that I seen, finding items is easy. They're very hard to see, but you can hit alt to make all items on your screen highlight. Here's a screenshot. The blue items are magic items and the white ones are regular.

There's more stuff to equip this time. In addition to rings, chest, etc that are in Diablo I, there's boots, arms, hands, and the belt area. I believe (not sure) that the better belt you get, the more small inventory (place to put potions and other 1 space taking items) gets bigger. I'm not sure about this, however. This is just a guess. It sounds right - to me anyway. Also, if you pick up a piece of armor that you can wear, it automatically equips instead of going into the inventory.

What's interesting is the potions. In Diablo I, there was regular and full heal/mana potions. In Diablo II, there's a variety. From what I seen so far, there's light, minor, regular and full potions. What I particularly like is how they work. Instead of drinking a potion and immediately getting cured, it takes time - depending on the potion. If you drink a light health potion, your life will refresh very, very slowly. If you drink a full potion, your life immediately refreshes to full.

There's also tons of more items that we've never seen before. There's throwing knives, explosive potions and a shitload more. There's also arrows. Archers will need arrows this time around. Woo! No more free shots for you. In addition to that, there's more advanced arrows. The only kinds that I seen are arrows and bolts. From reading around, there's also fire, ice, etc arrows later on in the game.

Graphics
The graphics are nothing dazzling and they're fairly out-dated, but hell, I don't care. Like I said yesterday, graphics don't make the game. The game as a whole makes the game. Graphics are just a side-dish. If it was graphics that were so important, nobody would be playing UO (can't get a better example than that). The graphics look like Diablo and Starcraft. That's fine with me.

Well, that's about it. I couldn't test the skill trees because you only get the first level. You can tell that it's going to be cool though. It shows major skills, then sub-skills branching off. There's also a lot of cool new skills that you get (IE: make monsters run away, etc).

I like it a lot. I haven't this much fun in a game in a long time. Hell, this is just a very, very limited beta. I'm definately going to buy it. I can't wait to play the whole thing. It better win a game of the century award. If it doesn't, I'm going to kill whoever's responsible for giving out the award. Now that's loyalty.

•Another one down...

Well, I GM'd Tailoring last night around 2:30am. Total number of hides to get through the 90s was just short of 15,000, and gain was at a rate of about 1 - 1.8 per burst hour. Taking it easy & working primarily in burst, it took me about 2 weeks to go from 0 to GM... you can probably do it even faster if you're willing to work Tailoring out of burst.

This was the first merchant skill I've GM'd since the UO:R changes, and I have to say it was pretty easy in comparison to pre-patch.

•Information

It seems people keep asking us for information on certain skills/monsters/tips. Great. I don't mind. But as Paladin and Red keeps telling you, please check the menu on the left of this page to see if the information you are looking for is there before emailing us or asking in the forum. It's not that we don't want to help. We wouldn't be doing this if we didn't. Just that alot of your questions are answered in that section. And, it might be awhile before you get an answer in the forum since not alot of people post to it these days :/.

Additionally, I will try to stay out of the PvP questions/comments for now. People keep disagreeing with my limited experienced filled answers on the subject and I want to save myself the emberrassment. When I get better, and can prove even further some of the things I wrote about, I will write on them later. Better to have proof to support your arguements right? Email Paladin for those types of questions. He seems to know more about the game than I do anyway :).

I logged on with Clyde yesterday playing around with lockpicking again. I gained .6. I used the same 10 chests and stayed inside the Delucia Inn (so I could just log out when done). I would lock the 10, pick them, run across the Inn (could be considered over 15 tiles of movement), relock and repick. Was going pretty good for a bit. After 10 minutes of no gain, I said screw it and logged him off. Right now he's at 80.4 displayed. Only 4.6 points to go! ARGH! Anyway, it's going up, and that's all I want right now. Gawd, I hate to think about Cartography right now. I hate raising that skill! Even before UO:R.

I did mess around with my Macer and Lumberjacker. Getting closer and closer to the point where I can move my macer to Felucca. My Macer is near GM macing and getting very high in Parrying. People keep saying they would drop Parrying for Magery on this type of character. I don't want to limit my options. 2 handed weapons suck ass against multiple opponents and I want the opportunity to take 2 on 1 if ganged....OOPS! I am talking PvP. Sorry. :] After GMing Parrying, I will be ready for Archery. Here Spider Spider!!! The Lumberjacker is almost GM parrying which is cool for him. Healing and Anatomy is going up at a good rate for them. They can almost cure poison now which is great :).

I am sorry my stories have been slow in coming. Haven't really been playing with Loren since the focus has been Clyde, the Macer and the Lumberjacker.

Anyway, have a great day.

Hasta.

•Raising Combat Skills

These days it seems like every third question on the forum is, "How do I GM archery?" It's been answered, repeatedly I might add, by several patient, kind individuals of which I am not one. The answer to this question, and all the associated questions(i.e. sword, mace, fencing, wrestling, anatomy.) is the bone knight room in Deceit. Yes, the famous wall is the best solo way to gain combat skills. Join up with the folks there and kill critters. Candyland is safer to do it in, but has all the odd healing restrictions. Better to do it in the old lands where you can heal everyone and they can heal you. Remember, it is a cooperative effort, everyone is trying to do the same thing. You heal them, they heal you.

The other way is to get a group of friends together and cast some Blade Spirits for entertainment. So long as you don't use anything to keep the BS from moving, it is perfectly legal for you to fight them for skill gain. One person should always attack the BS, and the others should heal that person.

Easy enough. If you have any questions, E-mail me.

•Jesus loves me this I know because Blizzard tells me so...

I just checked my e-mail and discovered I was one of the 100,000 people to get to play the Diablo stress test. I'm downloading it right now, as I type this very update. From what I hear, you can only play the Barbarian and it only has the level one skills. I don't care though. Once again my giant loincloth-clad, tattooed ass will be running around with an axe, screaching a mighty war cry while I chop crap in half. The difference; It's in a computer game and I won't get arrested. Stay tuned!

•One more step into finalization.

Well, the Diablo II Stress Test started some time today. I didn't get my e-mail, but that's ok. Since 100k people get picked, they're sending e-mails in groups. There should still be a few days to get yours if you didn't get selected yet. It'll be interesting to see what the game is like if I get in. It better be good, because I've been wanting this game since the day it was announced. What a waste of 2 years it will be if it sucks. I highly doubt that it will suck though.

•Chat.

There's an interesting chat with the developers/programmers/janitors for a handful of MMORPG's on Lum's that you can find here.

Interesting... I disagree with Balseraph when he said technology is the key to a good story. You don't need technology to have a good story. Like LeeS said, you need a good storyteller to have a good story. In order to have a good story, you need to make it so the story actually impacts the game. I'll throw in two examples about a good story and a bad story that I made up (no games accomplished having a good story, thus I have to make them up):

1. A city is captured by a group of monsters. You have to defeat the monsters in order to get the city back. Once you get the city back to its regular state, you get a special reward (say, a spell that will be needed to kill the boss in the next quest - nothing else will work). Sure, it could be more complex and better, but I don't feel like thinking of a long ass story at the moment. But anyway, it impacts the game. The quest item that you receive is needed in order to defeat a boss. Without out, you can't, and you might miss out on whatever the next quest has to offer. Plus, you get a unique spell that nobody else has. That's two plusses.

1. A city is captured by a group of monsters. You kill the monsters and the city is returned and everyone lives happily ever after (remind you of the Trinsic quest on UO?).

Story A is good, while story B sucks. I'd rather play a game with shitty graphics, etc that has stories like A; than play one that has amazing graphics and stories like B any day of the week. If there was a game with good graphics and stories like A and one that has shitty graphics and stories also like A, then sure - I'd rather play the one with good graphics. But technology isn't what makes a game. There isn't a better example than EQ. It has excellent technology, but the game blows big time.

•GRAB BAG TIME!

::reaches into the bag::
Hi Nieves,
Im Discord from the forum and I just wanted to let you know again how much I enjoy your posts! When I was a newer character I used to read this page religiously for skill gain tips. Then Red quit UO and the page just turned to crap, well that and all his info was dated and useless, anyway I was just about to say screw it and delete my bookmark until he had you new updaters. I have to say Im not a pvp person unless it's forced upon me and your stories of hunting monsters and besting the bad guys(the pk tamer at titans) really gave me a reason to keep coming to the page. To be honest it's the ONLY reason I come to the powergamers website. Too bad you dont play catskills :) We could hunt together sometime hehe
Well anyway Im sure you get tons of fan mail but I just wanted to let you know how much I love your posts and to keep them coming! :)

Thanks
Discord


Gotta lov it :) I don't get tons of fanmail. Just a little bit. But when I get it, it's great. :) Keep writing in! Bad, good, or indifferent. And I don't mind being corrected either. That just makes me a better updater. Maybe I should make a character for every other shard named "Nieves" just to say hello? Nah, that's overkill. Oh, and let me have my 5 minutes of fame. :) This doesn't last long.

Next!


My guildmate on Cats is an up-and-coming tamer. That code you encountered is part of the fix to people stacking to avoid the monsters. If anything's on the same tile as you, it says they're in the way and you cannot loot. We haven't done much testing with it, but apparently it checks to make sure the looter is next to the chest, or close to the chest, or some such. My friend had a mongbat next to him, and both were adjacent to the chest, and we had to kill it off so he could start looting. I think it has to do with monsters targetting the looter or some such. in addition to the stacking-on-a-tile cheesiness people did. I know they can be looted while spawn exists, as I would often attack the monsters as soon as they spawned, to get them on me. Sometimes they stood next to him casting at me, other times we ran around a bit. Either way, while I was dealing, he was looting. :)Thought that might help. You'll learn it soon enough, I'm guessing.
-Cocytus


Thanks for the information. Even though I knew they fixed stacking I didn't know that you couldn't loot while the thing was next to you. Thanks! Now I know to make the spawn run after me when I dig up a chest. It's not like I stand there when an Ogre Lord or Dread Spider spawn in anyway :).

::reaches into the bag for another letter::


I played UO last year for about 6 months, one of my characters is a "pure" dungeon rogue - he does not fight. He is near GM in hiding, stealth, lockpicking, detect hidden, etc. He has 96.9 lockpicking currently, and there is no chest he cannot open on the first try. because he never breaks a lockpick, he uses a set of "newbie" lockpicks that rez with him.
Upon re-entering UO about 2 months ago I was shocked at the amount of locked chests of gold laying around. I decided to add lockpicking to my GM Dex Monkey Fencer Guy. With the assistance of my GM Tinker, how hard can this be? This is when I encountered the new anti-macro code. AAAAARRRRRGG! Include in this the "difficulty based gains" system, and it becomes a real chore to raise lockpicking. Basically, I "Powergamed" skill raising as much as possible. This approach is to use a TON of lockpicks on really hard chests, breaking most of them, to gain skill fast. I also made a bag of 12 GM tinker made boxes and their keys. I set up a macro using UOA to pick each box (and later relock each box). This worked fairly well, but it seemed to fizzle a bit after a while. Somewhere in the mid 80's, I just dropped the bag on the bank floor - it was no longer of any use to me.
First you get to the stage where you can open the chests with about 100gp in them. Then, you get to the chests that have around 300gp in them - I am at that stage now. Currently my lockpicking is at 91.7 on the Fencer. I have been able to open the 300's since around the upper 80's I believe. The next stage are the ones that have up to 800gp in them, and the chance of GOOD magic weapons (I got a silver bow of Power from one last week). They are located in places such as: Lich Lord room- Deceit, Balron room - terrathan fort, Blood Ele spawn - 3rd level Shame. Using your "burst hour" is key to good gains when lockpicking. Have everything ready to go---plenty of lockpicks, runes to good lockboxes --- well before you log on for your hour. good places to Powergame gains are the tough boxes in the semi-secret room on the first floor of the Warriors Guild, across the bridge SE of Britain; and the 12 chests on the floor of the Magincia bank. ( I play in Fellucia on the Pacific Shard, actual toughness may vary). At 91.7, I still cannot open these. If someone with a near-GM picker comes along and opens these, it may take 24 hours for them to reset. Since I passed 90 skill, something strange has happened. It seems the I am "locked" at around .2 skill gain per day - max, done, finished, the end. I once broke over 300 picks, on 30-40 tough (unopenable) chests after my daily .2 gain, all for nothing. The good thing is, now that I know this - I log on, recall to the Warriors guild boxes, gain .2 in 2 minutes, recall back to my house, log off. The daily routine. I use around 5 picks a day, spend less than 5 minutes training. I figure it will take around 95 lockpick to open the 700+gp chests, at 91.7 now......that means.... roughly, the end of next month sometime. I think this system is totally stupid, and boring. But, maybe my experiences can help you some. BTW, once you can open the 700+ chests you can make huge cash. My rogue can make 15,000gp plus the chance of good weapons and armor in a single hour.

Later,
Shanty

ps. Don't forget to pickup and sell the gems, they stack in you pack so they don't take up many items, or weight. Last time I sold off my gem bag it weighed only 9 stone, but I got over 4000 gp from the provisioner!


Wow! Alot of information. Did you get it all? I hope so :) There are a number of different ways to make a "living" in UO. Pick one that's best for you and go with it :)

Some of you have asked me about sending in stories of your adventures and how to post them. Just send them into me and I will post them. Just no comments about "that's gay" or "you are gay", no porn, be descriptive, and have fun with it.

Hasta!

•UO Loop.

Well, it seems the link to Dr. TwisTer's for UO Loop doesn't work either, so I uploaded it to this domain. You can find it here.

•Having Fun With Tamers

I have decided to share my shameful story with you here. On another note, I should have some final Tailoring and Parry info for you in a day or so.

•Storytime!!!

Hiya kids! It's that time again for Nieves' afternoon story. Check it out here or in the stories section.

•Candy from a baby...

Hiya ALL! How was your weekend? Mine was up and down.

Let's begin talking about it shall we?

Stat gains. I will say it again. Do as Paladin tells you! Get to those 700 points, lock all your other skills and use the appropriate skills to gain the appropriate stats. I got my treasure hunter to 100str/93int using Mining and Spirit Speak. My lumberjacker got to 100str/100dex using Snooping (newly released packhorse) and Arms Lore. Careful because Arms Lore gave me some int. What was weird is that Arms Lore was also giving me dex. But who's complaining? I managed to get my macer up to 85dex using Snooping and Arms Lore but had to do it over because GL crashed HARD Saturday night and they had to warp it all back. Dammit. It's ok, I got him back up to 85 dex the next morning in one pour hour.

Twinks. When I was working my lumberjacker, I had a packhorse I released in the fenced in area outside the stables I would use for snooping. This guy comes up and starts taming it. I told him over and over NOT to tame it and to please to let me have the pack horse back so I could continue my snooping. The dude tells me he will give me back the packhorse if I give him my horse. He says that he had been having problems finding a horse to tame. I was like: "What?" He says: "Give me your horse, I will give you the packhorse". I told him there are plenty of horses outside the East Gate of Delucia. Go get one. He just says: "Give me the horse, I will give you the packhorse" again. My response? "Fuck you". I go, get 900 more gold, and buy another packhorse. I see him later trying to sell the packhorse to the stable master. I called him a dumbass and finish getting to 100 dex. WTF is up with people? Shit.

Dragon Tamers: Look, if you feel the need to kill stuff to get loot with your Dragon, go fight Titans, Dragons, or Balrons with them. Leave the Lich Rooms and like Dungeons alone. Bad enough we can't do shit to you in Trammel, but do you have to show up with 2-3 Dragons to get your loot/fame? I mean, C'mon? That is just plain stupid. You know you are the shit now so go prove it OUTSIDE of those areas. This guy showed up in the Lich Lord room Friday with 2 Dragons and starts clearing the place out of spawn. I just sighed and recalled out. No sense arguing with Tiamat is there?

I got to see the Star room for the first time this weekend. It was way cool. I had never been that deep into Terathan Fort as it was just plain suicide before the UO:R patch on GL. Either the Avengers got you or someone would block, pk, or steal from you. Maybe it was just my luck.

Some asshoLe (::winks at Red::) stole my kid's bike Sunday. Man. Have you ever had your bike stolen when you were a kid? That just out and out SUCKS! If the person that stole my kids bike is reading this site (which I doubt), I hope you hit a bump and fall onto the handle bars breaking off your dick for stealing my kids bike. It was rough watching him cry. It was his Christmas present dammit. :[

Movies. Dinosaur: a way cool movie. The graphics were great, the Fight scenes between a plant eater and a T-Rex were just amazing. I actually enjoyed that Disney movie with my kids. And if you have anything stupid to say about it, kiss my ass. I loved it :) Take your kids or your significant other to see it as well ::winks:: Battlefield Earth-too long, presentation of the plot was "eh", action scenes were boring, and acting was suspect. Worth it if you rent it for 3 bucks. Definately not if you are going to pay 7 bucks.

Lockpicking. I can't gain a damn point. ::sighs:: Clyde is stuck. That guy with the chests, get with me ASAP! I want to try what you suggested. I will tell all you about it when I try his method.

Anyway, I got work to do. Talk 'atcha later.

•New movie.

There's a new UO flash movie over at "Pimp Style Productions" that you can find here. Personally, I thought it was cool. It's the first time I even seen their site. The site is pretty cool too... Except KaLiBaH. He's not cool.

•Real magic? Does it exist?

Well, I was bored so I decided to go to a magic card trick site. Wow, magic does exist. Go to the site and see what magical powers that person holds. Go now and read no further. You will be amazed.

After thinking to myself "what the fuck", "omg", "wow" for about an hour straight, I finally realized how much of an idiot I am. If you're an idiot, such as myself, go here to find out how it's done.

... Funny. It had me fooled. But then again, I'm an idiot - as said numerous times already.

When nobody is updating, any update is welcome... Maybe.

•Just a quick Fishing update...

It seems that you need a base amount of skill to fish up a SOS now. According to what I've heard, you now need at least 65 in Fishing to be able to pull up the chest and the pre-chest rares. I tried it with a character locked at 0 skill, and sure enough, no chest. I'm not going to train another character up to 65, so someone else will have to confirm what skill level is necessary. Just keep this in mind if you're thinking of buying SOSs off of vendors...

•OMG, I'm updating!

It's been a while since I've updated. The other guys have been doing a great job and I didn't have anything important to write, so I just haven't posted anything. Even though this isn't about getting skills or money, it's still damn important: Go test housing and send feedback to the Dev Team. The code's really messed up. Somehow people are able to place more than one house with the same character and refresh them all. People are also getting "trapped" in the new houses as well.

I was going to use my Young account to do write-ups to all the dungeons similar to what I did with the wall, but going into dungeons removes your young status. Did anyone else know that? I sure as hell didn't. Hythloth + 45 strength = oooOOOooo.

•Forum Questions About Specific Skills

Before you post a question to the forum about how to raise a specific skill, check to see if it is covered in the coincedintally titled stats and skills section. You'll get a faster answer than on the forum. If your question isn't covered, then post away, but asking questions that have already been answered doesn't do much good, because a lot of the time you'll just get pointed in the direction of the already existing info anyway. This has been said before, by Red, but needed to be mentioned for new visitors to the site. Have a good one.

•Small update and movie.

The tailoring page has been updated with what KH said a few days ago. Also, there's a small Neverwinter Nights movie here. It's 14.25 MB's, and doesn't show a whole lot of gameplay. It's 55 seconds long... 20 of those seconds is gameplay footage.

•Shlink!

That's the sound Wolverine's claws make when they extend. If you don't know what I am talking about, go check out the trailor. It's going to be awesome. Now if they would only get Spiderman and Daredevil done, I would be happy. I read those comics as I grew up and they were entertaining. Not just for their "art" but for the story and drama they provided. Anyone remember when the X-Men were supposedly dead and wound up Down Under? Anyone remember Spiderman's time with the Black Cat? Or when the X-Men split up into X-Calibur? Man, those were awesome stories. Go to your local Comic Shop and check it out.

I got on with Clyde last night and got him to 92 Strength and 81 Intelligence. Listen to what Paladin_VT is saying. He knows what he's talking about. My only question is can I do this by just locking all my skills but the two I will be using to gain stats? Will that work? I will test it sometime with my newer characters. I stopped working with Clyde as my partner needed to get hides to GM her tailoring. She's almost there (99.7). Cheer her on. She could use the encouragement. :) I was messing around with my Lumberjacker and he is still gaining lumberjacking by fighting. Awesome.

I also logged on with my Miner/Smith (since I had all those ingots from Clyde mining) and decided to do some blacksmithing. I finally got up to 60 and was ha